Rise of the Machines
by Hawki
Summary: Oneshot: Useful as the DeeBees were, the Swarm was still a mighty foe. Maybe the COG needed a new type of machine...


**Rise of the Machines**

"Wow Damon. Didn't think you'd go into self-sculpture."

"First of all, hardy hah hah. Second of all, that's not even a thing."

"So? Hasn't stopped you being a pioneer before."

"Fair point." He leant back against the wall and nodded up at his creation. "So. What do you think?"

Samantha Byrne didn't say anything. If she'd wanted to make a joke and tear her significant other down a peg or two, she'd have no problem. Still, even if the two of them were in a game of one-upmanship 90% of the time, she could be serious the remaining 10%. But while in that 10% zone, she wasn't sure what to say.

"Sam?"

"I believe that Samantha is merely thinking of the best thing to say that shows that while she appreciates your efforts, she is uncertain as to the nature of this creation."

Sam glowered. "Thank you IRIS."

"You're welcome Sam."

Sam looked at Damon. Damon shrugged. She looked back at the construct that he'd dragged her into his workshop to take a peak at. She struggled to find something to say.

"It's, um…nice."

Struggled, and didn't exactly come out on top.

"Yeah, I know it's ugly," Damon said. "But I didn't exactly design this beaut to do pretty things."

Looking at the construct situated in an open pod, Sam didn't doubt it.

It was huge. Taller than any of the DeeBees that Damon had created over the last two decades. Its chassis was a shining silver, and it reminded Sam of a skeleton – a polished skeleton, not the type of skeletons she'd seen over the years of fighting the Locust, and still finding the occasional skeleton lying around on the broken world. If Damon had created another type of automaton to serve the COG, then sure, she couldn't object to that (even if the people of Settlement 2 could, and did), but did he have to go so…dark?

"So," Sam said eventually. "This got a name?"

"Yep." Damon looked upwards. "IRIS, if you please."

Sam shot her partner a look – sometimes she wondered if Damon had just wanted a second woman in his life.

"This is the T-800 Damon Baird Industries Terminator combat unit," IRIS said. "It is constructed out of a coltan alloy, and uses a hyper-combat chassis. Fully armoured. Very tough. Near impervious to small arms fire. Sustained by a nuclear fuel cell that's good up to one-hundred and twenty years."

"The hell?" Sam exclaimed. "You think this thing is going to be walking around even in one-hundred and twenty days?"

Damon shrugged. "Waste not, want not. Besides…" He tapped the Terminator's chest. "Bob here is in it for the long haul."

"Bob?"

"Well, got to give it a name, don't I?"

"Um…no?"

Damon smirked and looked up at the ceiling. "IRIS. Let's show Sam here what Bob can do."

"Of course Damon."

Sam folded her arms and scowled. "See you're on a first name basis now."

"Huh?" Damon looked up at her from the computer he'd just gone to. "Sam, we've always been on a first name basis."

"Uh-huh." She kept her arms folded and looked at the Terminator, still standing there like a piece of art. A piece done by a man with issues.

"Come on Sam, don't tell me you're jealous of an AI."

"Just saying Damon, you've got a girl named IRIS, a boy named Dave…" She looked around. "Where _is _Dave, anyway?"

"Oh, he's with Del in the training modules."

"Uh-huh. So, then-"

"T-800 activated."

Sam let out a yelp and stepped back. The machine's eyes had lit up, a red light shining and dimming like an iris would to adjust to light. Its head looked around, its false teeth giving it a perpetual grin – like it was a mass murderer taking in the sights and sounds of the aftermath of slaughter. That would be terrifying enough, but to top it off, the Terminator stepped out of its pod and onto the floor. Sam took another step back, looking how its skeletal feet were easily able to keep its frame aloft. A frame that looked down at her, as if the Grim Reaper himself had come to collect on his debts.

"Neat, isn't he?" Damon asked.

Sam slowly looked at her partner. "So, just to be clear," she murmured, "this _isn't _the start of a robot apocalypse?"

Damon scoffed. "Come on Sam, robot apocalypses are just science fiction."

"As opposed to robots themselves and apocalypses of grubs erupting from the ground to slaughter humanity? Kept at bay by a second apocalypse of laser satellites?"

"The Hammer of Dawn doesn't use a laser, it uses…bah." He picked up a pad and as he looked at the Terminator, began to type.

"How many of these things are there anyway?" Sam asked.

"Just this one," answered IRIS.

"And how many DeeBees could you create for the cost of this…thing?"

"Well, that would depend on what model, but if we're talking about the standard Shepherd…twenty."

"Thank you IRIS," murmured Damon.

"You're welcome."

Sam looked back at her significant other, still typing on the pad. "You really think Gears are going to want things like this fighting beside them? Most of the Gears I know are iffy enough about DeeBees."

Damon smirked. "Watch and listen babe. Watch and listen." He pressed a button on the pad, and the Terminator looked at Sam.

"Take off your clothes," it said.

"_Excuse me_?" She glared at Damon, who'd turned very red, very quickly.

"Um, sorry," he said, as he continued to type. "Don't know how that got in there."

"That is incorrect Damon," said IRIS. "You had me insert that line as a joke, when you proposed that the Terminator walk in on Sam while she was at your residence. I believe you referred to it as innuendo."

And Damon turned even redder. So did Sam, but from a more potentially violent emotion than embarrassment. Nevertheless, Damon kept typing.

"There we are," he said. "Bob, hit it."

The Terminator extended its hand to Sam. "Come with me if you want to live."

"Um, I'm living fine, thank you."

It retracted its hand. "Bite me."

Sam blinked. "Pardon?"

The Terminator moved its arms to support an imaginary rifle. "Hasta la vista," it said.

Sam looked at Damon. "Seriously?" she whispered.

"You are terminated," the Terminator said.

Damon smiled. "Great, ain't it? I've programmed it with one-liners that'll make it easier for Gears to bond with it in the field." He paused. "Is it working?"

Sam rolled her eyes and looked back at the Terminator. "Working my arse," she murmured.

"I'll be back," it said.

"Yeah, about that…" Sam said. She looked at Damon. "Okay. Fine. You win."

He blinked. "I win?"

"Yes. You win. You've proven to me that you could still become even crazier than when we started the whole 'husband and wife in all but name and legal standing' thing."

He cast his arms out and bowed. "I live to serve."

"Yeah, yourself maybe."

"Fuck you asshole," the Terminator said.

"No, fuck you," said Sam. She looked at Damon, who to his credit, was now typing furiously on his pad. The Terminator walked back to its pod and shut down, the light in its eyes fading away.

"Sorry," Damon murmured. "That line is meant for when it uses a chainsaw. Or tears a drone apart with its bare hands. Or-"

"Yeah yeah, I know about that," Sam murmured. "But…" She took a breath. "Okay. Let's look at this logically. We're on the verge of war with the Swarm. Jinn wants DBI to pump out DeeBees like there's no tomorrow. First question is, can you pump out these…these Terminators at the same rate?"

"Well, no, but-"

"Second question, even if you could, would Jinn accept it? Even if you're right about Gears accepting these things in the field, you know what the minister is like. Everything's about appearances. People see walking skeletons, and they'll think we really are at the End Times." She glanced back at the machine. "Again."

Damon remained silent.

"T-800," Sam mused. "What happened to numbers one to seven-nine-nine?"

"Technology moves very fast," Damon murmured.

"What Damon means to say is that he tried seven models before the T-800," IRIS piped in. "All of them were utter failures."

Damon grimaced. "Thank you IRIS."

"He even had an idea for a Terminator made out of liquid metal. I had to spend a good hour before he accepted that the concept was utterly ridiculous."

"_Thank you, IRIS_."

"You're welcome Damon."

"Yeah? Well if you're still trying to make me feel welcome, show Sam the synthetic skin schematics."

"Of course Damon."

Sam watched as her partner walked over to the centre of his workshop. "Damon…"

"Look, I get it," he said. "It'll be hard to crank these things out, and Jinn will probably want us to stay with the DeeBees. And maybe some Gears won't be easy about having Bob here as part of their squad. Still, there is something else I've been thinking of."

Sam sighed. "Why doesn't that statement fill me with a warm fuzzy feeling?"

"Because you only get warm and fuzzy when I'm filling you with…" Damon caught his tongue. "Never mind."

It was lucky for both of them, Sam reflected, that the hologram popped up at just that second. It showed a rotating image of the Terminator. Something that wasn't capable of filling anyone with anything other than dread, let alone…certain substances.

"This," said Damon, "is Bob as he appears in his natural state."

Sam snorted. "Define _natural_."

"And this," said Damon, sounding annoyed, "is how he'll appear with synthetic skin."

"Excuse me?"

Damon didn't say anything. He didn't have to. Over the hologram, a red substance was superimposed that reminded Sam of muscle. Muscle that didn't grow, but began to convert itself into skin. Her eyes widened as human eyes appeared on the Terminator's epidermis. As hair grew. How, in a manner of seconds, she was looking at not a walking skeleton, but a walking hunk of a man. Kind of a like a body builder, given his muscle mass and six-pack.

"Well?" Damon asked. "What do you think?"

Sam looked at the lower part of 'Bob.' "Doesn't have a dick," she murmured.

"Trust you to look there." He wasn't rising to the bait. "Well?"

Sam sighed. "Is this at any other stage than the theoretical one?"

IRIS began to speak. "The stage that Doctor Baird is referring to is-"

"IRIS, shut up," Damon said. He looked at Sam, before sighing. "It's possible," he said. "Not strictly legal, but possible."

Sam snorted. "When did legality stop you from doing anything?"

"Since Jinn came down like God's bloody hammer. But still…"

He had that look in his eye. The look that told Sam that her partner was going to say something extremely intelligent, or extremely stupid.

"It's an idea I had," he said. "We use Bob and Terminators like him as part of Hivebuster teams."

Sam folded her arms. "Go on," she said slowly.

"Think about it," Damon said. "Those poor bastards get taken by Pouncers, and only stay conscious because of their masks. Then they cut themselves out of pods, set a venom bomb, and fight their way out with nothing more than itty bitty pistols at the start of it. But with Bob?" He walked over to it, like something out of the words of Stein Frank, as Mary had approached her creation before letting it loose upon the world "Well, figure it out. He doesn't need to breathe. He's strong enough to tear through drones with his bare hands…"

_Why are you calling it 'he?' _Sam wondered.

"…and he can withstand almost anything they throw at him," Damon said. "And if we get him to look human, then the Swarm might treat him as being human. We could cut down Hivebuster casualties in half with this. Heck, we might not need Hivebusters at all."

He looked back at Sam. She didn't say anything, but even if she was wary about admitting it, her partner had a point. Of all the branches of the COG Army, Hivebusters suffered the highest proportion of casualties. Often, a mission into a hive was a one way trip.

"Well?" Damon asked.

She took a breath. "I think…that that's a pretty neat idea."

Damon blinked. "You do?"

"You do?" IRIS asked.

"I do." She patted him on his shoulder. "Believe it or not." She looked back at the Terminator. At "Bob." "Think Jinn would go for that though?"

"Maybe. Maybe not." He walked over and put his arms around her. "Still, figure we've got time. Swarm's waking up, but it's not out of the bed yet."

Sam said nothing. Damon said nothing. IRIS said nothing. And Bob, bless him, said nothing either.

_Him, _Sam reflected. _God help me._

* * *

_A/N_

_So I used my unlock code for the T-800 in _Gears 5_, only to discover that it only unlocks it in Versus mode. Gah._

_Also, wouldn't it make more sense for the T-800 to be a COG character than a Swarm one? Granted, the COG already gets Sarah Connor, but it's not as if the Swarm could build a Terminator. I dunno, maybe their leeches reprogrammed it ala the DeeBees._

_Whatever. Drabbled this up._


End file.
